Sorry, the pizza server is down

A colleague asks "Since when do you need a network connection to make a pizza?"

I don't know the answer, but I appreciate the question. Apparently the problem wasn't that the folks at the national pizza chain in question couldn't make a pizza, it was that they couldn't sell it without their computer being able to read the barcode on the box and send the secrets therein back to the mothership, presumably so that Corporate would know how many slices of pepperoni needed to be accounted for.

So the next time someone wants to sell you an "integrated, web-enabled solution" to connect up all the outposts of your empire, you might want to ask "But what happens if the connection's down?" (and particularly, what if someone decides they want to try to take that connection down). A good vendor should have a good answer, but it's still a good question.